How To Back Up Your WordPress Blog Online

Blogging and blogs have been on the forefront for quite some time now. With millions of blogs out there, covering a variety of topics, you can most likely find one that appeals to your tastes. No wonder, weblogs are assets to the readers and owners alike.

That being said, this is the Internet we are talking about here. Hacking and cracking attempts on popular blogs is common. We have had our share of not so pleasant experiences as well. Imagine losing control of your site and/or its contents. So much hard work, so much time you put into it, all put at risk. No one would like to lose such an asset.

Surely there has to be something that can be done to safeguard one’s content and hard work against such attempts.

Well yes, indeed there are preventive measures that you can take like enhancing security. Choosing strong passwords, changing them often, adding additional security plugins, etc. However, as is so often the case, ironically, the only thing certain about security measures is that no security measure is foolproof! So while you should do your best to enhance your website’s security, you should always take regular backups so that in the event of any such attempt you don’t lose all the content that makes your site what it really is.

There are a number of plugins available to back up your WordPress blog. One that is particularly interesting and feature rich is called “Online Backup for WordPress“. First lets see how you can install and configure it.

The installation is simple as is the case with most WordPress plugins. You can download the plugin here and then upload to your WordPress installation or you can search for the plugin from within the plugins area.

Once installed you should take some time to configure the various options that it has to offer and create a schedule for backups as well. To do so, click on “View Status” for Online Backup for WordPress, listed on the Manage Plugins page.

There you can choose which tables need to be backed up and specify credentials for your free online backup account that you can create to use with the plugin. The account gives you 50MB of storage, which doesn’t sound much at first. However, considering that the backup is highly compressed and the fact that the system is capable of deleting the oldest backup when you reach the 50MB limit, you can rest assured that you will have enough necessary backups in case you need them.

Next, go ahead and create a schedule for the backup. The plugin will backup the required tables automatically while adhering to the said schedule.

In addition to the usual features like compression and encryption, Online Backup for WordPress offers a number of other features as well.

You can configure it to send the backup to your email along with the online storage space.

You can lock certain backups, meaning that they wouldn’t be automatically deleted if the system needs to make space for new backups.

The backed up data is mirrored and stored at two different data centres for redundancy offering you greater reliability.

You can also log into your WordPress account and create a manual backup if the situation demands it.

Overall, Online Backup for WordPress is an excellent solution to back up your WordPress blog. With loads of features and automated online backups you can easily restore your blog back in case things go wrong.

Do you back up your blog or website regularly? What software tools do you prefer?

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Shahab khan

March 14, 2010

WordPress Database Backup is also a great one. I am using it and very much satisified with its services. If you have used it too then do let me know if there is any advantage in using Online Backup for WordPress as compared to WordPress Database Backup